“Your grandma on line one.”
“What’s this?”
Alvin put his hand to his forehead as if he were in pain. “Mea culpa,” he said. “Last Friday, when I left for the dentist, there was one of those yellow cards in the mail. We couldn’t deliver a package because your postal box is too small, or something like that. I put it in my pocket thinking I’d get it on the way home. Then I forgot. You’re not the only one under stress, you know. Anyway, last night Randy was putting my pants in the washing machine and brought the card to me. I stopped and picked that up this morning.”
“It’s okay. Don’t worry about it.”
“Damn it, Bertha. You’re never here. I’m doing it all.”
“I said it’s okay. Forget it.”
Alvin stood mutely in the doorway.
Bertha met his eyes. At length she said, “Look, I’m sure it’s nothing important. And I am sorry about all this.”
Alvin nodded. “Your grandma. Line one.”
“Right,” she said to the closing door. Her hand trembled as she picked up the phone. “Grandma?”
“Did Aunt Lucy get on the train all right?”
“Yes.”
A long silence followed. “You sound tired, Bee. You feeling okay?”
“I’m feeling confused.”
“Why? About what?”
Bertha took a deep breath. “We need to talk. I’m coming over right now.”
“Yes, okay. I’ll get ready.”
Bertha laid the receiver down gently, gathered the mail, and tossed it in her bottom drawer. Last Friday’s panty hose were still there. She shoved all the drawers shut and, for the first time in a year, locked them.
When she walked out past Alvin, she simply said, “Going to lunch. I’ll be back this afternoon.”
He scowled at her.
Downstairs, Bertha pulled the Jeep as far forward as she could and gunned it. The vehicle jolted over the cement marker with ease. She fought to control the steering wheel, narrowly missing the Camry. She wasn’t conscious of the drive to the east end of town. Her mind was spinning with questions.
Grandma was in the kitchen. In the old days, the table had barely yielded room to eat. Grandma had kept her pill bottles, mail, newspapers, margarine, salt and pepper shakers, screwdrivers, garden gloves, and a pair of pliers that she used to open stubborn bottles on the checkered oilcloth. But these days Elder Power kept the table fairly clean and cleaned off.
Bertha pulled out a chair and sat at the end of the table. Grandma, looking like she’d aged since yesterday, had an old photo album in front of her. Bertha remembered her stubbornly refusing to leave the house the night of the fire and wondered how easy would it be to extract a secret she’d held onto for thirty years?
Finally Grandma said, “Lucille told you?”
Bertha nodded, afraid to speak. Her chin trembled as she tried to hold onto herself. Something inside her didn’t want to know. What if the paradigm shifted so far she’d never recover? After all, everything she knew about herself was based on lies. There was no way to go back now.
Grandma shook her head, looked down at the kitchen table, then back at Bertha. “I never meant to hurt you. Keeping that woman away, keeping the secrets gave you a chance at a good life.”
“Tell me about my mother.”
Grandma shrugged.
“I’m angry with you right now. I don’t see how we can go on unless you tell me the truth.”
“They was this good Italian family. Their daughter got a baby with a colored man, a big disgrace. That baby was your mama. She coulda passed and did often enough. But she growed up and fell in love with your daddy. I warned Curtis about what happened to his uncle and his light-skinned wife. I tried to tell him it would come to no good, but by then she was getting big with you. So I took her in, and they got married.”
Grandma slid the photo album toward Bertha. “I dug this out. They two or three good pictures in there.”
“Where did this come from?”
“I had it put away,” Grandma said.
Bertha opened the black pages slowly. She saw a picture of Grandma and Grandpa, her father as a little boy, and Aunt Lucy, a baby on Grandma’s lap. It struck her how tiny and beautiful Grandma had been, sitting up straight, her shoulders thrown back, a warm smile on her lips. Bertha couldn’t remember a time when Grandma’s shoulders had been straight. Even when Bertha was a child, Grandma always seemed to carry a heavy weight. Now she was bent with osteoporosis.
Grandma’s dark, bony finger tapped the page. “In the back. Their wedding picture.”
Bertha flipped the pages quickly. Then she found it. Her father had been a small man, a lot like Grandma. Bertha’d never seen him in a shirt and tie. He was handsome, and his bride was tall and strong, wearing a light-colored suit and a hat with a veil that covered her forehead. The woman was much younger, and her nose was different. Here Bertha could see her African heritage, much like Toni Matulis’s Doree. But it was unmistakably Sally Morescki.
Grandma said, “He was so happy with that yaller gal.”
“What happened?” Bertha gazed at the lightly colored photo. Painted. She thought she remembered Grandma telling her that before color film, photographs were painted in the studios.
Grandma shrugged. “They had the world against them. When she left, she took you with her to her white grandma’s in Chicago. Wasn’t a month later, she come back, told me how you’d be better off with me. Your skin was like your daddy’s.”
Bertha’s hands trembled. “But if he loved her...”
“He drank a lot. Gambled. Got in with the wrong people. I tried to stop him, finally had to throw him out of here. With Grandpa gone, it was just you and me. Sally come less and less. She sent money or a new dress when she could. Things never fit you. You was a chubby chile. Never got the size right. Honey, you was better not knowing.”
Bertha pushed her chair back, went to the sink, and drew a glass of water. Her mouth was dry, her head pounding. She watched an air bubble cling to the side of the glass, then float to the top.
Grandma kept talking. “She come to the funeral, your daddy’s funeral—wanted to take you then. I told her she was right the first time about where you belong, and I was gonna raise you. Later I found out that Lucille kept up with her in Chicago.”
Bertha sat down. “It wasn’t right to keep this from me.”
“Maybe not.”
Bertha sat in front of the photo album again and turned the crackling page. Silver-colored hinges remained where two photos had been removed, but her own first grade picture stared up at her from the opposite page. Slowly, a worm of pain began to eat at her heart. She flipped to the last page, and several yellowed newspaper clippings slid out onto the table.
“What’s this?” she asked, scooping them up.
“Stories about your father’s death. I forgot they was there. Don’t know why I saved them.”
Bertha picked up a brittle clipping carefully. It seemed to crack, almost disintegrate at her touch. She saw the word “homicide.”
“These are about a murder.”
Grandma nodded.
“Whose?”
“Curtis Brannon.”
“He died of alcoholism.” Bertha’s fingers trembled. She let go of the clipping and watched it flutter to the floor. “I went to college on the insurance money.”
Grandma silently shook her head, then looked at her hands folded in her lap.
Bertha’s voice shook. “He died of cirrhosis.”
“I made it up, figuring it would keep you off the booze.”
“Well, it didn’t work.”
“No.”
There was a taste of pennies in Bertha’s mouth, a fierce nausea and rawness, like the moment after you break a bone. She stammered again, “I went to college on—”
Grandma interrupted, “Honey, that man didn’t even have a job, not a regular one anyway. He was a gambler, cards and horses. Sometimes he won, mostly he lost. He had
a five-hundred-dollar insurance policy I’d bought him when he was a boy. In 1967 it wasn’t even enough to bury him right.”
“But the money—”
Grandma stared at her hands, rubbing a swollen knuckle. “Sarah—I mean Sally—seen to it there was money for your education.”
Bertha swallowed hard and wiped sweat from her upper lip. She knew it would be even worse whenever the adrenaline passed and a feeling of normalcy returned. She was gripped by the elusiveness of the truth as it drifted like smoke through human life. The events in the photo album had happened more than three decades ago. She’d structured her entire life on Grandma’s version—her explanations. When other children had talked about their parents, she’d felt a ripple of sadness. What, she’d wondered, would it be like to have two parents—or four, or even one, like most of the kids had by the time they were in middle school? All she’d had for as long as she could remember was Grandma. In the evenings after supper, during the winter early darkness, they’d read to each other and played board games. At night after hot chocolate with marshmallows, when Grandma tucked her in bed, she’d thought about parents and how she never suffered the lack of them. She didn’t want the parents her friends had. She’d just wanted Grandma. And now she knew, with no uncertainty, that Grandma had lied.
“How did my father die?”
Grandma’s words came as if from a great distance. “He was walking down a country road, drunk, they say, though I got no idea how he got out there. Car musta hit him. Course, no one come forward.”
“What do you mean? Is that what the autopsy said?”
“Weren’t no autopsy.”
“But this says homicide.”
“Suspected homicide. Police just let the whole thing drop. Called it a hit-and-run accident. He was just another dead colored man to them.”
The tears startled Bertha. She rubbed them across her face, then bent her head and let them fall silently, freely to the floor.
Grandma pushed herself up from her chair and, holding onto the table, moved two steps, at last pulling Bertha’s head to her chest.
Bertha saw large wet spots on the shoulder of Grandma’s housedress; she smelled the lavender sachet in her clothes and heard Grandma’s heart beating faintly. Bertha felt Grandma’s frail hands stroking the short, gold-tipped hair. As always, a feeling of warmth and safety enveloped her.
Chapter Thirty-three
When the Elder Power girl came at one o’clock, Bertha quickly shoved the clippings back into the photo album and squeezed the whole thing into her briefcase. Her eyes were swollen, and her head throbbed. She told Grandma she’d be back after work and would spend the night.
“You don’t need to do that. I’ll be fine. Nobody bothered me all the time Lucy was here. Nobody bothered me the night we had that nurse.”
“Remember someone set Latch’s store on fire.”
Grandma seemed to think about that and then said, “I guess I wouldn’t mind the company.”
They were standing on the front porch. The sun was fierce and direct, a whitish heat pouring down on the sidewalk and lawn. Bertha could see translucent waves rising from the hood of the Jeep. Light shimmered on the chrome side-mirrors.
Grandma balanced her slight weight on the walker and tucked loose hair back behind her ear. “You have to go back to work?”
“I’ve missed too much this week. I won’t be late.”
“Don’t worry about me.” Grandma turned her cheek. “Now give me some sugar.”
Bertha bent to kiss the old woman, then picked up her briefcase and stepped off the porch into the sun.
This time the Lambert alley was full, and she had to pay a meter. If she forgot to come down and put money in at three thirty, she’d have a ticket. As Bertha trudged toward the revolving doors, the woman with the dark crew cut in Lilith’s Book Store tapped on the glass, waved vigorously, and smiled. A week ago, Bertha had been entertaining thoughts of asking that woman to coffee. Now she was up to her ears in a new romance, three men were dead, and everything she knew about herself was a lie. She not only hadn’t been to an AA meeting all week, but she also had been in touch with her old pusher.
Bertha raised her hand, waved at the woman, and then shoved her way through the revolving door.
As she stepped out of the elevator on the third floor, she remembered the night she’d found Joe Morescki, the darkness, the blood and the moving through it all at her own risk.
Alvin was sitting in front of his computer with his lunch spread across his desk when she entered the office. The smell of french fries reminded Bertha she hadn’t eaten.
“Two calls.” Alvin held the pink slips of paper toward her.
She muttered “Thanks,” took them, and kept walking.
“Bertha?” Alvin said.
She stopped and turned.
“Are you all right?”
Bertha shrugged. “Sure, fine.”
Alvin stuck a french fry in his mouth and said, “I’m glad to hear that because, frankly, you look like hell.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be on a diet?”
“Touché.”
Bertha let her shoulders slump. “Can you share? I haven’t had lunch.”
Alvin pushed the fries across the desktop and ripped his big beef sandwich in half. “Pull up a chair.”
Bertha scooted a waiting-room chair across the floor, sat, and started stuffing french fries in her mouth.
Alvin watched her. When she wiped the salt and grease off the tips of her fingers, he broke the silence. “Why don’t you tell me about it?”
Bertha took a sip of Alvin’s Coke and leaned back. “I don’t know where to start.”
“I think I know some of it.”
“Good. You start.”
“Last Friday night Joe Morescki was killed in your office. Since then two other men have been killed. That brings the body count to three—unless you heard of another.”
Her mouth full again, Bertha held up three fingers and nodded.
“Okay,” Alvin said. “Joe Morescki was found dead in your office, George worked here, and Mark Mossman came to talk to you maybe hours before his death. Then there was a fire near your grandma’s house, and your house was broken into.”
Bertha held up two fingers and said, “Twice.”
Alvin raised his eyebrows and went on. “The people who were in the process of buying the Latch property are Moresckis.”
Bertha nodded.
“Is there more?”
Bertha counted off on her fingers. “I’ve been hauled in for questioning by Homicide twice; Joe Morescki’s wife, Sally, is my biological mother; and my father was probably a criminal who was murdered by the mob. Plus, I been fucking my brains out with a member of the police force.”
Alvin’s mouth fell open. He busied himself clearing napkins and remnants of lunch from his desk, sweeping crumbs into his hand and brushing them into the wastebasket. Finally he turned and said, “A member of the police force?”
Though Bertha fought it, the corner of her mouth turned up, and then she laughed.
Alvin touched her arm. “Why don’t you tell me what’s happened?”
Bertha blew her nose on a soiled napkin and tried to compose herself. She told Alvin about Aunt Lucy’s bombshell. She opened her briefcase and extracted the ancient photo album, turned to her parents’ wedding picture and pushed it toward Alvin.
“These are your parents?” Alvin asked, examining the yellowed picture.
Bertha nodded.
“You look a little like your mother. She’s lighter-skinned, her hair is different, but the eyes are the same.”
“Her eyes are green.”
“Except for that.”
“She’s mixed.”
“Is that a bad thing? You’re not prejudiced, are you?”
Bertha thought about his question. She’d known many mixed-race couples. She’d been one. Hell, she was one. But this information was all too new. At last, she pointed to the photo an
d said, “That’s Sally Morescki.”
“You’re not kidding, are you? Honey, your life’s getting out of hand. You’ve got to get back in control somehow.”
“Huh?”
“Acting instead of reacting,” Alvin said. “All right, you got hit with some big surprises. You’ve suspected along that your family was connected to the Morescki thing somehow. Now you know how. The question is, what do you do next?”
“I just didn’t see it. How could I see it? But I’ll grant that Sally is tall. No one in my family is over five-foot-four but me.” Bertha closed her eyes, trying to remember her meetings with Sally.
“You couldn’t have known. We tend to believe what our families tell us—what little they tell us. I remember when I found out about Santa Claus—”
“Oh, for Christ sakes, Alvin.” Bertha raised her voice. “This isn’t like that.”
“Sorry.” Alvin brushed imaginary crumbs off the desktop. “I guess it isn’t funny. What is it like then?”
“I don’t know. I feel like buying a big bag of M&Ms, crawling in bed, and pulling the covers over my head.”
“Okay, then what?”
“I suppose I should talk to Sally again. How could she meet me—twice—and not mention this little issue?”
Alvin considered this. “Why don’t you ask her?”
The know in Bertha’s throat was in a knot so painful she could barely whisper, “I don’t think I can.”
“Want me to help you?”
Bertha looked at him. Of course he’d been helping her all along. He’d gone to the City Contract office for her. He’d encouraged her to contact Madame Soccoro and had given her the lead on the Mossman brothers.
Nine Nights on the Windy Tree Page 27
